


The Slow Path

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fix-it/head-canon for The Angels Take Manhattan</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Slow Path

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Blink, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, and Series 5-7. Non-spoilery mentions of several other episodes. Briefly canon-divergent, but by the end, the emotional status quo is pretty well in sync with the start of The Snowmen.

“I will never be able to see you again,” the Doctor managed between sobs. 

“That's...not entirely correct,” River interrupted. “You definitely can't take the TARDIS. I don't even think my Vortex Manipulator will get you there. But there is one way.” She nodded toward the angel. “And by the way, sweetie: never lie to my mother again. Or I will kill you. For real this time.” Her words were maple syrup candy: sugar over ice. “You told me about the first time you met them, with Martha. You and she were both touched by the same angel and you landed in the sixties within hours of each other. If you go now, you and Amy will probably wind up within a day or two of Rory and each other at most.”

The Doctor wiped tears from his eyes. “Take good care of the TARDIS, River. I love you, so much.” Neither was willing to look away from the angel.

“Take care of my parents. When should I meet you?”

“Best make it 1960 or so. Empire State Building's a good landmark. I start spending a lot of time on this planet in the sixties, and I really don't want to run into Canton or anyone else from my past—or my future—if I don't have to.” His voice was almost steady again. “That should give us a good twenty years, eh, Pond?” He tried to smile through the tears. He didn't want to think about that goodbye, but he was willing to do anything to put this one off even that long.

“You'd spend twenty years just hanging out with us? In 1930s New York? You barely lasted a few months and that was with the Wii.” Amy laughed in spite of herself.

“If Rory waited two thousand years alone, I can wait two decades with you. With both of you.”

“Both of us?” Amy asked, a bit bewildered.

“Always.”

“Both of them?” River asked, hand involuntarily flinching toward her holster.

“Oh, look at the time! Come along, Pond!” he managed as he surrendered to the Angel's grasp.

“Sorry, mum. Gotta run.” Amy blew River a kiss.

“I'll set up some cash and papers for you,” River promised. “See you soon,” she said as her mother vanished. “Relatively soon. For me, at least.”

***

Time passed, and Rory soon found Amy, and the Doctor, and a courier carrying a suitcase with the deed to a small house, fake identities for each of them, and ten thousand dollars in cash.

“I feel like I'm in a spy movie,” Amy thrilled.

“The last ten years have been one spy movie after another,” Rory observed. “I think I might soon be ready for something a bit more...dull.”

“I think I can probably manage that. Yes. Almost definitely.”

***

Despite Rory's desires, they do have more than a few adventures over the next two decades. He still has the sonic, and his phone, and the psychic paper, and even without the TARDIS there is trouble to get into. The Doctor admits that it wouldn't do to leave this slice of time and space unprotected. He takes them to visit a few of his friends. Tallulah and Laszlo are doing well; they've joined the circus: Laszlo as part of the freakshow and doing heavy lifting, while Tallulah's lithe dancer's frame has translated perfectly to the trapeze and the tightrope. Winston and Bracewell are bearing up under the pressures of war. Jack is still waiting to meet him again, now for the second time. He apologizes for making him wait so long, but assures the man that his younger self, and the world, will need him, and helps him rig up the hand-tracker.

They don't need to pretend to age the Doctor. At first they say his is twenty, and people see his youthful antics and ask “is he really that old?” At the end, when they say he is forty, those who know him best look into his eyes and see the lines of the universe creased across his brow and ask “is he really that young?”

River calls them every week or two for them; every day or two for her. She sounds like she's having a ball, careening across the universe with the TARDIS. (The Doctor half-suspects that the only reason that Sexy went along with this plan was to get some time being flown by River.) She misses them, of course, but long stretches of time while more or less alone is old hat for her. 

It works out to about two years for her, as it happens. For all her adventures, she is never happier (and never sadder) to see them again. Amy and Rory are greying, over 50 now. They've adopted a couple of kids, Anthony, Brian, and Lisa, the youngest, who is perched on her 'uncle's' shoulders when River lands the TARDIS. The Doctor starts, and laughs, and somehow manages to not spill the tot when he sees the return of two of the most important women in his life.

“Time to meet your big sister,” he murmurs, tone light despite knowing what is coming. “You know why your uncle has to go, don't you, Lisa?” The girl nods and recites a detailed analysis of the paradoxes that the Doctor faces if he sticks around too long in a time period where he has already meddled so much. “Smart as a whip, and not even 6!” He musses her hair proudly.

“Her eighth birthday was three weeks ago, you nincompoop,” Amy chides him. River smiles. Her old lady still has it. Rory finally brings up the two boys. Anthony and Brian are 15 and 12 respectively. It took them a few years to decide if they wanted another daughter, after River, but now they wouldn't trade Lisa for anything. Not even another lifetime with the Doctor. Not even now, when it is time to say goodbye, at long last. River takes her three siblings off to one side so that their uncle can say goodbye.

“I never did this for anyone,” he says at first. “Spent a lifetime with someone in one place like this.” His eyes are wet with tears. “Not Rose, not Sarah Jane, not Madame du Pompadour.” Not even my own granddaughter, he thinks. “I thought it would drive me mad. Madder. It almost did at first.” This is quite true, the Ponds know, and the pent-up nervous energy often released itself at night, in the bed they shared. He laughs a bit as the tears begin to flow down all their faces. “I'd almost forgotten how to live like this, one day, one little adventure at a time. And I am so glad that you reminded me.” He drew them into a hug. “My beautiful, wonderful Ponds.” He does not try to convince them to travel with him and River, even though—he thinks!--their timelines might just about have synched up. He can tell that they have firmly settled into their new lives, new jobs, and new friends, with three children to raise. (Perhaps he will pay them a visit in twenty years or so.) If there is a glimmer of longing and wanderlust in their eyes, then it is too faint for even a Time Lord to notice.

“We were happy to share our lives with you,” Rory tells him, and means it.

“I don't know that we'll necessarily miss the adventure and the excitement; not now,” Amy says, and the Doctor can tell that they've planned this.

“But we will definitely miss you,” Rory adds. “So take care of yourself, and our eldest.” The Doctor promises, meeting them eye to eye, if only barely. They are visibly crying now. 

“We love you, Raggedy Man,” Amy concludes, and they kiss, for the last time. 

“And I you,” he replies. He picks up a small case of mementos and photographs that they have prepared for this occasion, and walks over to say goodbye to his nieces and nephews. They have been more or less prepared for the occasion for their whole lives, but even Anthony, trying so hard to be tough, and strong, and brave, both for himself and for the younger two, and for his parents, can't resist shedding a few tears.

“What will you do, then, River?” he asks his wife.

“I thought I'd spend some time with my parents and my siblings,” she tells him. “And then maybe with you. I booked us a table next to the Singing Towers of Darillium when you want to meet up again.” His blood runs cold at this little tidbit; the Singing Towers are the last time that he knows he meets his wife. There may be others, but...

“Sure,” he says, able to conceal his fresh distress beneath the tears already on his face. “Dinner. Singing Towers. See you soon,” he says, but not too soon he thinks. The loss of his Ponds he might well have managed. After all, he has had over thirty years with them now, and already he can feel the universe calling to him, thrilling him, all of time and space begging to be explored. And he knows they have already led most of a full life. Amy's writing career has taken off, and Rory has a successful practice, and soon enough Anthony will be looking at colleges... To be honest, he admits to himself, this would probably have been easier on him than many of the goodbyes he has had to make recently. Donna, Rose; even Martha, knowing he can visit her and Mickey freely, hurt more than this, once he realized the way he had neglected her. But to face losing his Ponds and his wife, all in the same day, was enough to break the hearts of even an ancient Time Lord. 

As soon as he closes the TARDIS door and dematerializes, he begins sobbing uncontrollably. 

***

He awakes the next day to find that the TARDIS has redecorated: hard, gleaming, metallic. He whispers his thanks; the old warmth would not suit him now. Nor does the professorial tweed, he decides, and Sexy—wonderful creature—has laid out a new suit for him. Garish, even by his standards, with a purple waistcoat, and velvet, and a top hat. It screams depressed, eccentric loner, he decides. It is perfect. “Maybe I'll go to the Victorian era,” he muses aloud. It is as good a place to wait as any, he reasons, and he can visit the Paternoster Gang—Strax, at least, is always good for a laugh or two. And there he will wait, wait until he cannot bear to go any longer without seeing his wife, and then he will keep the fateful reservation at the Singing Towers. Until then, he will wait, and let the sadness leach from his body, and perhaps he will help his friends solve a few mysteries, play the Mycroft to Vastra's Sherlock. Depressed, eccentric loner indeed, he thinks, and laughs to spite the tears as he dresses himself. 

He hopes they will be happy, even if he cannot.

**Author's Note:**

> This is why math is important, kids. 22 years (1938-1960) = 1144 weeks for Doctor & Ponds. If River calls, on average, every day and a half for her, but every week for them, that works out to just over two years for her.


End file.
